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Shooting Victims Flood Local Hospitals

The shootings at Fort Hood in Texas severely taxed local hospitals as they struggled to cope with the flood of victims, and left them scrambling for blood donations as the casualties came into their emergency rooms.

Victims were sent as far away as Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Temple, about 30 miles distant, since it is one of only a few Level 1 trauma centers in central Texas, so designated because it is capable of handling the most serious injuries. The hospital reported receiving 10 shooting victims from Fort Hood, and called for blood donations to keep up with the demands of treating all the wounded.

The hospital closed to the public in the wake of the shootings “as we focus our attention upon the victims and their families and to insure the safety of our patients and staff,” a hospital statement said.

While most of the victims were believed to have been military personnel, one of the dead was a civilian police officer, Fort Hood confirmed.

Officials had not released the names of the victims by early Friday morning, but information on some of the casualties nevertheless dribbled out.

Peggy McCarty reported that her daughter, Specialist Keara Bono, 21, of the Army Reserve, called her from a hospital and said she had been shot in the back, according to CNN. She had arrived at Fort Hood a day earlier and was scheduled to deploy to Iraq on Dec. 7.

Ms. Bono, who attended high school in Olathe, Kansas, lives in Minnesota with her husband, according to the Kansas City Star. Ms. McCarty said Bono was on the phone with her husband during the shooting and he heard shots and shouting before the line went dead.

Lisa Pfund of Random Lake, Wis., told The Associated Press that her daughter, 19-year-old Amber Bahr, was shot in the stomach at Fort Hood but was in stable condition. “We know nothing, just that she was shot in the belly,” Ms. Pfund said.

A hospital a short distance from the base, Metroplex Adventist Hospital in Killeen, received seven of the victims from the Fort Hood shootings. A press release said one of the victims had been under distress on the way to the hospital and was later pronounced dead. All the victims being treated at the hospital were with the military, the release said.

Correction

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Scott & White Hospital is the only Level 1 trauma center in Central Texas. In August, the state designated two Seton Family of Hospitals facilities -- University Medical Center Brackenridge and Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas -- as Level I trauma centers.